Like Sleeping
by hangthesilver
Summary: Going through the stunted motions of living isn't the same as being alive. Akuroku, AU.


**Title:** Like Sleeping  
**Rating**: T  
**Word Count:** 4, 673  
**Genre:** Supernatural/angst  
**Pairing:** Axel/Roxas  
**Warnings:** language, angst, bad clichés. The usual.  
**Summary**: Going through the stunted motions of living isn't the same as being alive.

**Author's Notes:** I am, of course, not abandoning This Frenzied State. You would pretty much have to kill me to do that. I am just having… beastly issues with it. I am sorry. .

I wrote this a few nights ago and I'm tired of looking at it. I don't think this is one of my better efforts at all.

As always, constructive criticism is _always_ welcome. This is the first time I've used first person narrative the entire way through, and I'm not sure every point I was trying to make got across. Or if the point got across at all, to be perfectly honest. Next fic Axel is not going to be such a puppydog. That version of him is getting old. Idk. No beta on this either, so feel free to point out errors. Have at. If all goes well I will have another Halloween fic up by … Halloween, and hopefully it will be much better than this one.

__

"It'll be just like sleeping?" Axel asks, and he sounds betrayed.

"I don't know," Roxas answers, looks at his hand, waves it around his face, tests the skin.

"Yea, this should be awesome," comes Axel's sarcastic voice, and Roxas turns around, to see him walk out the door. Roxas thinks about following him, but holds himself back, instead walks around the freezing room, cold, so cold, everywhere, and sits in the corner. There's a lot of bustle in a second, lots of people moving in and out of the room, and Roxas is so cold.

__

Second only to destruction of New York by the hands of some clawed Godzilla is the destruction of the cemetery.

They put lights on the trees, blasphemy in the form of sacred, and clasp hands and sing songs while someone wearing a robe sprinkles some water here and there. Lots of flowers, white trees, black dresses, pink hair ties and white baby doll camis. Cover up, dressed up, all the same thing. Very new age. Modern.

Axel's wearing black. Roxas thinks a lot of things, but wonders why Axel is wearing black. If anything, he should be wearing red, but he doesn't seem to think it's appropriate. Pity. Roxas thought he knew his friend better than that. Apparently not.

They aren't speaking to each other, so Roxas keeps his distance, stands by his crying mother, doesn't really listen as someone said some words that really didn't matter anymore. Boy was gone. Boy was dead, boy was gone, Axel isn't speaking to him anymore. Some wounds were thicker than the rainy season in the Amazon, and Axel probably wouldn't speak to him ever again. That kind of hurts. A lot of things, all sort of bunched up and rolling around his head painted like basketballs, those things hurt too.

The lights stay where they've fallen, but people start to disperse. Roxas follows behind his mom, keeps Axel in his eye, just the corner, and pauses outside the black SUV, hand on the door, watching Axel pace, back and forth, some sort of angry look on his face, unlike him, the anger. That face turns up, those green eyes catch his, and Roxas presses away. Too much guilt there, a lot more guilt than they should have, and Roxas slides into the car, sits next to his crying mother, and watches as people spill out of the never to be the same again resting ground.

He should come back tomorrow. This is a two day affair, after all.

__

Somebody had won something, some sports team that Axel doesn't care about. They've clinched some cup that would one day go onto the Internet as a random trivia fact Alex Trebek would say in his automated voice, after he finally kicks it and the world, as a whole, declares no other host would do. They've learned from the Price is Right. They know now. Replacement is another word for "fail."

Axel goes along with the procession, follows his mom to the mountain with the letter painted on top—it stands for something ridiculous, like the name of the state they were in, what the hell, did they think people would forget?— and sits with her on the dirt. There's no grass here. Some cactus, maybe, a rattler, and a ravine they call a wash where there was no water. There are certainly stars, but not right now, because that goddamn football-baseball-hockey-water polo team had won, and they have to celebrate.

He dejectedly kicks a rock. It bounces, runs down the side of the hill, hits some poor, abused individual in the back, and then continues on. The poor, abused individual looks back up at him with a glare, but it seems to waver for a second, as it lingers on Axel. Immediately he puts his hands up, guardedly, to shield his face.

There are pity looks everywhere these days.

The fireworks keep going, keep standing in the sky, blocking out the dipper, Orion's belt, the hunter, a billion things that can't all be possible at the same time because the earth doesn't spin that way, but Axel draws them in his head anyway. Normally. When the fireworks aren't there, smashing the quiet, lighting up the shadows of the mountains, highlighting the dust, the shrubs, the dirt.

Nothing worth saving, Axel surmises. They might as well rip this place up and put a mini mart. At least beer was worthy. No regrets.

He draws his knees up, tilts his head, looks down the mountain, sees Roxas sitting there, next to his mom, and he seems to realize someone was looking at him, because he tilts his head back, and Axel looks away. Too much pain there. Should be guilt. But there's just something raw, shredded, fresh. He makes a face against his own arms, sighs, and angles his head up, watching them desecrate the night sky, as they try to forge some new semblance of whatever normalcy is.

__

The sky is brush stoked today, there are clouds everywhere, and the only music on in the car is good music.

Roxas thinks he might have died.

Well, that was kind of funny.

He gets out of the car, wanders past the mesquite and the shrub, over to where Demyx is sitting on rock, his knees drawn up as he gazes kind of sadly at the rabbit twitching on and off against the slanted grass. The rabbit sort of jerks at his approach, staring up at him with a sort of mad eye, and then darts off, into the grass. Roxas swings his gaze back toward Demyx, who merely makes some sort of annoyed look at the grass, and then emits the type of sighs people reserve for misbehaved children in grocery stores.

Loud, without value, completely worthless.

Roxas goes over to him, crouches next to the rock, doesn't say a thing. He doesn't really need to. Rabbits remind them both of only one person.

"Kinda miss him, don't you?"

Roxas nods, his throat suddenly locking up as he sees something in his mind's eyes, perfect, inked and forever. A cage, and a bathtub, and a lot of stupid stories they told each other at night after not being able to 's a lot of that lately. Sleepless nights. Stories. Stuff he doesn't remember, stuff he doesn't want to remember, stuff he shouldn't have to remember. Stupid stuff. Meaningless stuff.

"Rabbits were always kind of his thing," Demyx continues on, and Roxas could punch him in the face, but they're kind of far away from civilization, and he doesn't know if he could get help for Demyx before Demyx collapsed into a paralyzed, quivering mess of helplessness.

They were unfair assumptions, Roxas thinks. Demyx has more mettle than that. It's more fun to pretend he doesn't.

"Kind of your thing too, I guess," Demyx continues, a little more sadly than the rest of what he'd spoken, and Roxas again keeps his mouth shut. He doesn't really know what to say, how to say it. If it would even matter. What else is there to say? They're sort of out of time to even say anything.

He stands up suddenly, not wanting to hear Demyx say anything more, not wanting to be plunged back into whatever he had been thinking about—not those eyes, of course not. He hasn't been thinking about those eyes at all.

Consoling himself with the fact that the pain and the guilt were probably troubles best spoken to the birds, he walks back to the car, slides in. Demyx would be in soon. There was nothing stopping him. Nothing besides maybe that pain, and the guilt, and the birds. He watches out the window, sees Demyx get up, walk over to the mesquite Roxas had passed, and rests his palm against it, then his head, and then he just kind of slumps, all together, all at once. Roxas bites his lip, leans against the seat, counts the ways he would make this right, and when that number came out to somewhere between freezing and none, squeezes his eyes shut and whatever picture is left in his mind sort of fizzles out. He opens them a second later, sees Demyx pry himself off the tree, run a hand over his eyes, and pull away.

__

"You can suck it," Axel catcalls; it was rude, to say the least, but Sora doesn't seem to hear him, because he's still sitting at his desk, head resting on his palm, staring at the paper in front of him. But Axel doesn't really think he's reading it. Seemed to be staring right past it. Spacey was one word; _special_ was another.

"You're really boring, too," Axel adds, a moment later, to still no response and he sighs, kind of heavy, and flops on Sora's bed. Sora's room is clean smelling. Kind of like the breeze, a little bit like honey. Axel is really surprised. Roxas's room doesn't smell like this. Roxas's room kind of smells like sweat, ash, bitter, torn apart, jagged edges, all kind of sweet smells that Axel can't really name, except for rainbows, blue skies, metal pipes and concrete, checkers, shoelaces, sand, seashells, yellowed, rusty tire wheels, brokengluedtornapartandheldbytapepants, ice cream, salt, bitter, tears, but it doesn't smell clean. Doesn't smell like Sora's room.

"Sora, Sora, Sora," Axel murmurs, flinging a hand over his eyes, closing them against the pressure of his arm. "Your brother's an idiot."

Sora is kind of nodding, probably in response to him, probably nothing at all in response to the paper he's currently staring through.

"Always knew you were the astute one," Axel continues, now in a bored tone. "Ya know? Older, whatnot. I mean, I know we treat you like an idiot, but come on. That's Roxas. Entirely Roxas, am I right? I am. You know I am."

A murmur of assent. Axel was beginning to feel like he was alone here.

"But I wish we could talk about it, you know, I guess," Axel says, and he feels something start to creep out of his—his goddamn _soul_, or something ridiculous like that, freckled and monster-like, full of half, vague, truths not really formed and thoughts and feelings and huge pincer claws ready to attack. Slithering too, like a snake, and that's how Axel pictures it starting to fall out of him, like out of a tree, a snake, viper, adder, Cleopatra, for god's sakes. "But he's so goddamn stubborn," he rushes on. "I mean, he really is. I mean, I know I am too, but c'mon. I didn't—he didn't—it just happened, wasn't anyone's fault, but he blames himself and I blame myself and he thinks I think that I blame him and I think that he thinks that it's my fault and… maybe it was."

It's the first time he's said those words aloud, and Axel bites his lip.

They've lost everything, haven't they; none of this matters particularly anymore.

"Yea, well, I'm gone," he says shortly, throwing his hand off and nearly rocketing off the bed, tripping over himself to reach the door. He turns with his hand on the knob, looks back at Sora, who is looking up at him, with some kind of glistening look in his eyes, misty, dewy eyed, and Axel has really had enough people cry on him these days. But Sora's Sora, and that dew remains where it should. Axel grinned a little bit then, more of a lazy, you're an idiot and so am I but we'll not go there, but really, you totally are an idiot smirk.

Sora's a lot of like Roxas. Which makes sense. Which is probably why Axel likes him so much, and why he was sitting here, pouring his heart out the soles of his feet into this too clean smelling room.

Axel drags his tongue around the inside of his mouth, gives a two finger wave to Sora, and pushes open the door, hearing Sora start up, like he was wanting to stop him, but thought better of it. Good. Axel has a destination in mind, and so he stops in front of Roxas's door, gives it a good hard look, tries to think of fighting words but nothing comes except _you'll never take me alive_ and that's ironic, so he opens it and steps in and the smells assault him, more than the eyesore poster on the wall, or the chipped paint, or the for once in the history of the room's occupancy by Roxas fixed bed. It's aural. It's dizzying, the sweat, socks, sunshine, flash, water, sea, ocean, salt, blueblueblueblue smell. He goes over to the bed, sits on the edge, licks his lips, rests his hands on his knees, bending his head and staring at the wooden floor that creaked every time their shoes pounded over it, screamed every time Roxas got impatient with him and threw him bodily onto the bed. Axel lets himself fall back, throws his arm over his eyes, hardly hears when Sora comes in and sits next to him, and Axel looks up then, sees the dew again in Sora's eyes, heavy, hard, sad, soft.

"This is my fault," Axel says then, but Sora doesn't seem to hear him, because Sora's a lot of things, but Sora's not stone, and the tears kind of zigzag down his cheeks, imprints left by ghosts alone in buildings, drip onto the wooden floor, pools there before slipping away.

"This is really my fault," Axel repeats, and the words shiver down his spine, up his fingers, curls his toes inside his skater shoes that Roxas laughed at when he bought them. "I shouldn't have been—I was the one—he's not—Sora—"

Sora's shivering now too, only his seem to shake only the surface, but Axel knows that's not true, but Sora's stronger than him. Axel's shaking not too, spread eagled on the bed, when Sora drops next to him, curls up sort of into his warmth, and the tears really come then, spreading out on the comforter, dampening the sheets like spots of dried sunshine and salt, only they aren't near a sea, and there's no sand.

"I'm sorry," Axel whispers, and Sora's rocking back and forth, and it might be a nod, but he can't tell, so he closed his eyes and tries not to think, tries to block out the blueblueblue smell, the guilt, the pain, the broken branches in his memory that broke because he—because of a lot of things, but mainly because of him.

"I'm sorry," he whispers again, but it does no good, and so he gets up, leaves Sora there shaking by himself, and he gets outside, he can't stop himself looking up at the inky blue sky. Can't stop himself from closing his eyes, can't stop from seeing endless roads, turnpikes, slithery little paths in the back brush with the light dappled in places from the golden, hazy afternoon sun. Can't stop those feelings, can't stop any of that, and can't stop the cruelest words, and what might have been.

__

Axel's apartment is clean, something that startles Roxas when he walks through the door. Someone's obviously cleaned up, and he knows it hasn't been Axel, because Axel would definitely not have hung his horribly gaudy clown hat off his life-sized Storm Trooper. Those two things didn't mesh in any universe, not that Roxas was counting universes now. Not at all.

Reno was here, Roxas realizes with a start, though his heart initially hammered about a million miles an hour when he saw the unruly hair. But the figure was sprawled a little too unfamiliarly across the bed, lanky limbs askew and hair held back and slightly—very slightly—neat with a black strap. Roxas tiptoes around the bed, rests on his heels as he peers at Reno's face. Reno's eyes are closed, and he's breathing sort of shallowly, black headphones clamped over his ears like baby wombats. He's asleep, Roxas realizes, and he relaxes a hair, goes over to Axel's desk and sits on the chair, eyeing the papers resting there in a clean sheaf.

They look legal, and not belonging to Axel, so he looks over to Reno's still form. Reno must have come here from the cemetery, Roxas thinks. He's wearing a messy black suit, the tie dangling from his neck, his top button undone. They were Irish twins, Roxas thinks with a slight grin. It was a long time ago, he thinks, as he stretches a little, the chair squeaking a little under his weight. Reno doesn't move. It was a long time ago, Roxas thinks again, when he used to get them confused. He'd seen Axel first, and of course, there was history behind that, but Axel had nearly punched his brother's teeth out when Roxas had hugged Reno without realizing it wasn't Axel. That had been funny. A long time ago.

"I'm sorry about that still," Roxas says aloud, but Reno doesn't hear. Roxas frowns, gets off the chair, goes to where the IPod is resting on the bed a little ways past Reno's hip. It was on a track, some sort of techno beat, and Roxas rolls his eyes. He doesn't feel like waking him though, because Reno's eyes are starting to twitch beneath his clamped shut lids, so Roxas wanders a little around the room, resting on the plush blue rug and looking at the Storm Trooper a little sadly. Axel had found it in the dumpster downstairs when taking out his trash. Think about that, Axel had said, exuberantly and loudly, as they dragged it, cursing and cawing, back up to Axel's apartment. Someone just threw it away!

Because it's trash, Roxas had snidely commented, more out of aggression caused by the fact he had tripped over the stairs twice going backward and was more than put out because Axel refused to go first backward. He'd recited some stupid story about how he'd walked backward into a giant cactus one day, and Roxas hadn't bought it, but he did it anyway because… well, because it was Axel.

Roxas actually thought the mannequin was kind of creepy. Axel thought it the coolest thing since forever.

Axel thought a lot of stupid things were cool, after all. Roxas, for one.

Reno twitches on the bed, his fingers this time, not just his eyelids, so Roxas thinks he better leave. He doesn't much want to wake Reno up, so he casts on look at the Storm Trooper, then back at Reno's form, now groaning as he flips over on the bed. His eyes are squeezed more tightly shut than normal, and his lips are silently moving, a two syllable word, whatever it is, but Roxas thinks he can make an educated guess.

"I'm sorry about that," Roxas says, closes his own eyes. "You have no idea. How sorry I am. About all of that."

He opens the door and leaves.

__

Axel's at the cemetery when Roxas wanders back, when it's nighttime and the lights they hung during the day are still there, spread out and glittering like tiny miniature suns nobody cared to extinguish.

He thinks about leaving. He probably should. There are gulfs here, gulfs and endless nothings and nothings that are endless and he should just go. This was their place, he thinks, and suddenly has to stuff his fingers into his mouth, to keep from running after Axel, and dragging him to their spot. The night is breezy, and the stars are out, and the images are stronger than before, sprawled on the grass by the spinster tree, when they picked up constellations that didn't exist, made no sense. Summer had nothing on winter. Not here. Not here, not in this dusty, damp, dark, desolate landscape.

Moving over the dirt, kicking a rock that went hollowly bouncing off into the dark distance, Roxas ducks under the place that he and Axel had long ago cut out and went to their place anyway. Theirs. It belonged to him, belonged to Axel just as much as it belonged to him, but belonged to him too. Axel's sitting on the other side of the tree, facing in the opposite direction, and Roxas knows Axel hears him. Kind of like a thousand bees that sting underneath his ribcage, brush across his breastbone, twist and loops around his shoulders, that kind of hurt when Axel doesn't turn around.

He sits down on the other side of the tree, facing in the opposite direction, facing a plethora of gravestones, lit up by party lamps and burning shades. He's mildly surprised when someone ambles by him, looking at him with sort of a dead, confused stare, and then continues on by. Must suck, he concedes to himself, must suck to be that person.

The state of _that_ was still being explored.

"Nice night out," comes a voice from behind the other side of the tree, and Roxas jumps, scrapes his skin against the scratched bark of the mesquite. He gazes up, sees the weedy branches swaying in the breeze, illuminated by the lamps.

"Usually is," Roxas answers, but it isn't haughty, just matter of fact, and there's a noise of assent.

"Saw your brother today."

Roxas isn't surprised.

"Yea? How's he?"

"Taking it kind of rough, you know."

"Sora's an idiot."

"Kind of," Axel agrees, but it itches to go on.

"Dem and Reno are both kind of torn up too."

"Figures."

"Reno's kind of an idiot too."

"Kind of," Axel agrees again, and again itches to go on.

There was nothing except for silence for a few seconds, except for the breeze rustling the leaves of the tree above them, the people occasionally ambling by, sort of surprised at the lights. Roxas doesn't blame them. He feels sort of bad and responsible for them.

Suddenly there was a scraping, the furious noise of rocks crunching, and Axel is suddenly right by him, crouching right next to him, pressing into him, and Roxas makes a little noise of protest, tries to move away, but Axel is clutching him, pulling him closer and staring at him, hard, and to Roxas's surprise, Axel's eyes are watery, sort of.

"This is—

"All my fault," they finish together, and bam.

Axel's eyes are always too green, and Roxas squeezes his hand, doesn't let go, slams Axel into his lips, and they're cold, but they're still Axel, smoky and slow and not too bright but not that dumb and Axel's trying desperately to push himself onto Roxas's lap, to straddle him and pull him closer, but Roxas shoves him off, tries to roll on top of him, and they tussle there in the dark dirt for a few moments, each trying to best the other, and Roxas finally has him pinned up against the tree, Axel's fist pushing into Roxas's cheek, and a few of the others have stopped their meaningless ambling to come and watch.

"Are you fucking trying to kill me?" Axel asks, and it's supposed to be a joke, but Roxas clamps down on his own lip, let Axel's hands go.

"I'm just kidding," Axel says almost immediately afterward, "I'm just kidding Roxas, I'm just kidding, come here." He grabs Roxas in his almost shell-shocked state, pulls him closer, and inhales, the salt, the blueblueblue, the trembling, the quiver, all in his hair, spread out, everywhere. "Roxas, come on," he whispers into his hair, tightening his grip. "Roxas, you don't—it wasn't—I—"

"You were driving!" Roxas says, and it's more like an explosion, more like destroying something. "You were driving, I shouldn't have—I wasn't—I didn't think that you—"

"I was responsible for both of us," Axel tries to interject, but Roxas butts his head up sharply into Axel's jaw, which causes his head to crack back against the tree and his teeth to click together.

"This can't go on forever," Roxas whispers, and there were tears in his eyes. "I can already not see you all the way Axel, I can't—I don't want to—this is my fault, all of it—"

"Fuck yea it is," Axel kind of growls, and Roxas wilts in his lap, but Axel is rubbing his own jaw, alternating between that and his head. "Goddamn Rox, my fucking head."

"Stop being a sissy," Roxas tries to say, but it comes out choked.

Axel compulsively grips him, holds him, watches the breeze play with the canopy above them, stares plaintively at the white faces watching them, thinks about the days where they had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and the stars were diamonds. All those stories, and they had come here, laid in Roxas's car, held each other, came out to this tree, held each other, wind moving like a hand around the headstones.

Roxas said it reminded him of his mortality. Axel said it reminded him of Halloween.

It didn't really matter, it was theirs.

"What am I going to do when you're gone too?" Roxas asks, rocking into him still. "What am I supposed to do? I lost you, I lost them, they're not going to be the same anymore, they're not—"

"There's a time and a purpose for everything under heaven," Axel suggests.

"Shut up."

It's silent for a few moments, and the white faces kind of disappear, because over the cracks of the mountain, the sun's starting to come up, smiling, and Axel feels kind of cold, all of a sudden, colder than before.

"None of this was your fault," Axel says gently. "And… none of it was really mine. You remember that feeling when it happened?"

"Been trying not to," Roxas said.

"No. Not that, idiot. Use your brain." He tugs Roxas up to look at him again, and his white face was tear streaked, Sora, sky, sun, water, wind, all of that, and Axel closes his eyes. "Remember this." He leans forward, Roxas mostly falls, and they're kissing, and there's color in his brain, more color than before, of the view through the mirrors, the windows, the cracked glass, the car that veered when Axel wasn't paying attention, the flashes of green, broken, pain, hurt, nothing, silence, cold. And more cold. And more cold.

Roxas pulls back, breathes but really doesn't, looks over at the sun

"Is this it?" he asks

"I think so," Axel says, pauses for a few contemplative moments where he thinks about screaming about it being unfair and how nothing made sense, decides against it. "Been waiting for this, haven't we?"

"I don't want to lose you," Roxas says, but his voice sounds a little faraway, not resigned in any sense of the word, but sad.

"You won't. You really won't. And they won't either. Okay?"

"Can't you stay?"

"No. No. I can't. You can't."

"Can't we go together?"

"No. But there's the other side, right?"

"And it'll be just like sleeping."

"Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe there will be unicorns and flying cats."

Axel pulls back, meets Roxas's eyes, and they aren't really scared anymore, because Roxas, Axel has to remind himself, adapts better than most fish. It takes a second, but Roxas isn't stupid or in denial. He just wants to ask.

"Kind of like vampires," Roxas says, leaning into him.

"Sort of," Axel concurs, and closes his eyes.

"I'll miss them," Roxas murmured against his chest.

"So will I."

"I love you."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"You deserve to hear it more than once."

Axel squeezes his eyes shut at that, blindly lifts Roxas's chin, kisses him again, winds his neck around Roxas's to hold him close, and it's like some sort of star explores, because the wind is blowing now, a lot harder, knocking the lamps down from the trees, and Axel wonders if they're doing it, stopping that desecration of that cemetery at night without the lamps, and then Roxas mouths three words into his chest, and that's enough.


End file.
